Wisconsin "Cheeseheads" - Page 1986

Having fun with all those babies. We had our broody with the three eggs and 2 of the chicks survived. The last was small and couldnt leave the yolk sac and part of egg shell. the two that made it are so sweet hiding in and under and on the mama. Otherwise have 7 sweet babies running around upstairs in a rubbermade bucket that they are already outgrowing after a week. Need to get a baby pool for my garage with the heat lamp out there. Give them some room. We did 2 babies last year so no comparison for space!

GOt my seeds started in the basement. Now need to stop these cold snaps with everything that needs to go outside. Want to get my little greenhouse up and ready to go outside but with the wind like yesterday, it would be long gone.  Warm up now!!!

Yeah and you are too dang far away for me to get it. I will have my own goats someday.... maybe some of those Nigerian Dwarfs since they have such high butterfat. Makes for a very smooth soap!

Quote:

Originally Posted by babylady4 

Yeah and you are too dang far away for me to get it. I will have my own goats someday.... maybe some of those Nigerian Dwarfs since they have such high butterfat. Makes for a very smooth soap!

BL4... where are you located? I love good soap and would someday love to learn how to make it. What kind of scents are you doing? curious minds want to know!
 

I am far away from you Kristip.... centrally located. I live roughly 30 min from the Bash site.

Making the soap is easy, getting the ingredients is the difficult part! I make cold-process soap using a basic recipe of lye, olive oil, coconut oil and palm oil. I have made soap using other oils as well (sunflower, avocado, wheat germ, etc...) but these recipes tend to cost a bit more due to the variety of oils used. Purchasing 100% lye can be difficult; it is used in the process of making meth so the gov regulates the purchase (I have managed to find a local hardware store that still sells 2 lb containers of lye). Getting the palm oil is also difficult, I have to order mine online. When I first started I used lard instead (it has the same chemical properties as palm oil in the soapmaking process), but lard is not as good for your skin as palm oil. For someone who would like to experiment, you can find all the oils at the supermarket and just substitute lard for the palm. 

Right now, everything I make is experimentation in coloring, scent and ingredients. Like I said last year at the bash, I need people to test what I make and give me feedback on what they like/not like about the soap. One of these days I will get everything in order and start selling.

I have made floral, citrus, spice, and herbal scents. I am going to make a woodsy soap one of these days..... and I think chocolate would be wonderful....

BigZ, I plan on bringing more again this year. I'll perfect that coffee soap. ;)

I have thought many many many times about making my own lye soaps, but I'm just not ready to take the leap yet.  I even looked into making my own lye.  Seems easy enough!  Especially since we use wood to heat anyway, i could come up with plenty of hardwood ash for it.  I'm just waiting til my kids get older and I don't have to worry so much about having the chemicals around.  For now i stick to the melt and pour soaps.  That's something the kids can do with me and it's fun!  :)  I love making stuff that can be useful around the house.  Otherwise I'm not much of a crafty kind of person.  i used to do a lot of crocheting, but once kids came along, I just don't have time for fun projects so I've turned to useful frugal stuff to fill the void.  :)

I am freezing today!  I finally built a fire.  It didn't help that i had to clean out the deep freezer today.  I got the call yesterday that our 1/4 of grass fed beef was ready for pickup and I had just gotten those chickens butchered this weekend so I had to scramble to make room for the beef.  i ended up posting on facebook to see if anyone wanted to split the 1/4 with me cause I just didn't have room.  Plus, it was a huge cow this time!  My 1/4 alone was 199 pounds!

Then I also put in our monthly Frontier co-op order today and had a bunch of orders from people coming in that I had to get taken care of.  Plus schooling the 2 older kids.    The baby turned 7 months old today and she got her 2nd tooth as well!  

That's about it for me.  I need to figure out what we're doing for dinner and get on it.  :)

Good afternoon all!  I am going to try and post before the CRS gets me!    ........UUUmmmmmmm.....let me thing now;

Yup--had an awesome visit with MXM today....she goes by "margaretcindy" Cause she looks just how I remember my cousin Cindy...LOL!  It is UNCANNY! SO anyhow I gave her the "grand" tour and I think she loved it all!  Even the poop!   She said that everything was so "different" than she was used to that she loved it all!    It is so fun to give people tours...I just wish she would have brought her DD along cause I left the eggs for her to have an egg hunt!  But alas, she was in school.   I lit the oven early because we ran out of fuel oil as you all know...I NEEDED some heat in the house!  Didnt want to waste the propane so I baked some potatoes!  It helped that I started on the counter and got warmed up...but then I went out to do chores....then we ate some baked potatoes for lunch!  Lol--I will make the rest with mushrooms to have with steaks on the grill tonight! MMMMM!

I think I have forgotten all I wanted to say...since I started this post I have:  let dogs in and out, fed said dogs, let them out and in, defrosted the steaks, done some laundry, finished vinegaring (and rinsing) the coffee pot and gotten the asparagus ready for the micro.....and am now sitting down with a glass of sherry...w/o Tommy cause he is back in the basement! OMG---the beagle looks like she wants to puke on the couch....the day NEVER ends!

I guess I am going to try and answer later!  Gotta run!  Terri O

Sheesh--where are you guys?  Oh yeah, I have buckeyes. they are from Bigz.  moving them into breeding pens tomorrow. I have 2 0ut of 5 broody right now. They lay a pretty brown really round egg. Not as prolific of an egg layer as I would have thought, although maybe they will do better as free range birds. Also the bird is not as heavy as I would have thought.  HTH--TO